


The Impossibility of Us

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4959841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants her to want the impossible. A giant angst-fest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Impossibility of Us

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/profile)[anepidemic](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/) , for the advice, the ideas and the ♥.

I look across the table and think  
(fiery with love)  
Ask me, go on, ask me  
to do something impossible,  
something freakishly useless,  
something unimaginable and inimitable

 

 

 

He sits at one end of the leather sofa, watching her, with a well worn book open in one hand that he’s doing a shoddy job of pretending to read. His arm rests across the back of the sofa, quietly stretching towards her, fingers aching to wind themselves in her hair. She sips her tea in silence, flipping another page of one of those tabloid magazines she’s fond of picking up during her visits home. He can feel her toes wiggling against his thigh through her socks and the green knitted afghan she likes to wrap herself in. Photos of celebrities, in various states of wandering through an airport or down a normal city street, are plastered all over the cover with scandalous headlines hanging like banners above their over-sized sunglasses and caps pulled low.

The stillness of these moments is both a comfort and a curse, allowing him time to contemplate her in ways he can’t while they’re running about saving the universe. Yet they only serve to remind him of just how little time he has with her. He wants to get up and move, to take her somewhere and impress her and steal another of her wide smiles, with the tip of her tongue just so against her teeth. It’s easy to let the frustration build up until it bursts out of him in some manic rant about the pink rains of Tyrian, which will inevitably lead to a frantic dash to the console room because he simply can’t wait to show her how marvelous it is.

He sees the corner of the magazine bend, can feel her eyes falling on him, catching his gaze. He stands quickly, moving to replace his book and slipping it back on the shelf as if he’d intended to do so the entire time. His hand smoothes over the tired volumes for a moment, but when he turns back, the sofa is empty, the blanket draped haphazardly over the arm and spilling on to the floor.

With a heavy sigh, he pushes his hands into his pockets and wanders into the hallway, casting one longing look back at the pile of verdant yarn.

 

 

 

The kitchen is so small compared to all the other rooms. She asked him once, just a few days ago over their breakfast of toast and jam, why it wasn’t bigger, and he’s sure there was a reason for it, but he can’t remember what it is anymore. He can see her, sitting at the table with her hair up in an elastic band, a few wisps falling lazily to her shoulders.

The chair squeaks against the floor as he pulls it out, sits down and waits.

He waits for her ask him to do something impossible, or at least improbable, because she knows he can and would try anything once just because it’s her. He waits for her to wonder something out loud so he can pick up the thread of thought and follow it through a series of useless facts and bad puns, until she groans and slumps in her chair, feigning death with a cheeky grin. He waits for her to touch his hand, skimming over his cooler skin, and filling up the spaces between his fingers with hers and the empty places in his soul with her smile.

But there is only the quiet passing of another second.

 

 

 

He finds the place where it’s thinnest, where he might be able to put a glass to the wall and eavesdrop for a moment. She likes that, the little secrets that are just for them, and when they remember it later they can laugh until their ribs scream for mercy with strangers all around them staring at the mad little couple in the corner booth.

It’s a bit like two tin cans and a bit of string, and he doesn’t have to see her smirk to know it’s there. But when he lifts the end to his ear, her amazement and bubbly laughter is strangely absent, and the only sound is the tired thump of his hearts.

 

 

 

He runs his hand around the edge of the console as he walks around and around the room, bathed in a soft blue glow. The rhythmic motion of the rotor and the gentle wavering hum of the Tardis are soothing, helping to quiet his restless mind. It’s always restless these days and he finds his thoughts drifting back to her, her smile and her hot pink nail polish.

A beep from the monitor breaks his comfortable reticence and he stops, tilting the screen up. He double checks the readings and smiles. Then he’s bounding down the hall and skidding around the corner, coming to rest in front of her bedroom. He doesn’t knock; he just pushes open the door, his gob already three sentences into a rant about the botanical gardens of Voosh, and how now is the best time for them to go if she wants to sit on a giant fluorescent mushroom and make him recite nursery rhymes.

Two steps inside he stumbles over a discarded shoe and falls silent.

The empty room still carries the faint, ghostly scent of her, as if she just rushed passed him and out the door. The bed remains disheveled like always and he sinks onto the edge of the mattress, running his fingertips over her pillow, still bunched up and depressed on one side where her head would lay. Except the sheets are cold and a fine layer of dust coats the side table, dulling the neon green of her alarm clock. A breath flutters from his lips as he rests his elbows on his knees and his head on his folded hands, picking a faded spot on the carpet at which to stare for a while.

He looks for her sometimes, when the wind blows just so, like her breathy sighs in his ear, or when he remembers a place he has yet to take her but knows she would love, somewhere utterly silly because it’s what you do when you have a space ship and a time machine at your disposal.

It’s funny how easily he forgets.

 

 

 

Within a week he finds a binary star on the cusp of overwhelming its lesser neighbor and peeks through the last crack in the wall. She’s different than in his mind, thinner and harder, with a darkly cautious look in her eyes as she approaches him. It hurts to see her already changing after only a few months, and he wonders if it has been longer for her or if he’s really lost his sense of things this time. The way her face shifts into something more hopeful and the careful rising of her hand to his cheek nearly stops his hearts.

He’s still just a painfully insubstantial image.

He wants her to ask, wants her to want the impossible, to tell him to throw it all way, let it rip itself apart so they could be nothing and nowhere for less than a tenth of a second, before the whole bloody thing comes crashing down around them. In this moment, he would do the unimaginable if for one brief, shining instant she could be his again and his arms could find the perfect curve of her body. But she doesn’t ask, and though his hearts are full to bursting with a love he always runs out of time for, a part of him is grateful.

They remain the best impossibility of all.


End file.
